Phantom Limbs

A Story by :-)

Remove the hands that do no work.

The skin around my fingernails were raw and bleeding. I constantly chewed and bit at the skin there, and eventually it peeled off in layers, sort of like an onion, but not really. If I bit too deep and tore too quickly, the skin came off in tiny chunks, and blood got on my clothes.
         Yes, my clothes! Often I'm teased because I always dress in black, but there isn't any other reason why I do so other than that I can see pictures in my clothes. I see shapes crawling through the dark fabric.
        The pictures are wonderfully terrible. In the wrinkles and folds of my shirts and sweaters and my loose-fitting pants, I can make out the eyes and mouths and noses and hair of the creatures that speak to me--animals and monsters of which only I know of! Of which only I could hear! When they get too loud, the only way I can quiet them is by tying off their tongues. This does take a toll on me, though. The only way to go about doing this is to do it in total secrecy--I absolutely cannot let him catch me--I clawed at the creatures through my clothes, burying my nails deep into their grinning caverns to keep them quiet, because I really, really hate it when they start screaming.
        There was a problem with me, though. My nails were flattened down to painful slivers and they simply would not do at all. Without them, the creatures refuse to quiet down, even for a few hours at night when I had to sleep! Even for those few hours at night when I did not even wear black! They moan and scream in my ears and over my head for days on end if I do not have the means to silence them.

My hands were the only part of me that I truly did detest. I could live with the nighttime sounds, and I could live with the ghosts in my lungs, but I absolutely could not, and still can not, stand the sight of my hands. I have never experience such revulsion than when I stared at the patchy, bloodred flesh of my fingertips and knuckles. Black liquid seeped from under my fingernails and from the thickest lines of my palms.
        They were good for nothing but making a mess of my shirts and my schoolwork.
        They were good for nothing so I removed them
        Woodworking was a craft my father had taken up before he left me. I'm sure he would be relieved he hadn't taken his saw with him.
        The removal was not as easy as I'd thought. One flip of the power button--that part was easy. It really only began hurting halfway down through my left wrist. The pain was really almost unbearable.
        Almost.

        Remove the tree that bears no fruit.

The creatures torment me even in the daytime. It's much worse in the day. They lurk within the shadows of this white room; they hide within the bleached sheets of this strange bed I lay on.
        It's so much f*****g worse and i don t know what to do
        I feel the creatures moving inside me, forcing themselves through the tangled web of veins and arteries and I know they're searching for a way into my soul. The bandages wrapped around the stumps I have for wrists pulse and breathe with a living energy. The place where my hands once were is now a dull, ghosting ache. A creature's body pushes itself out through the gap between where my nail and finger would be--and suddenly it is before me and I am insignificant as any grain of sand this unfamiliar building is built upon.
      It's massive and black and its eyes are dark as hell itself and fear like I've never felt before rises up within me and then I'm crying out--a bloodcurdling screech that sends blood rushing up my spine and through my neck and finally pouring from my eyes. I tremble and shake and I can barely see a thing and everything around me is tinted in red. I can't stop screaming but that's perfectly fine because I don't need a breath anyways. My vision clears in one eye and then people I've never seen in my life rush into the room, throwing aside the translucent curtain and reaching towards me. They're all trying to reach me. I don't want them to touch me.
      The creature recovers from his stupor and falls onto my body. I struggle and thrash and I don't stop screaming but it presses its clawed hand to my mouth and I can't breathe and it's suffocating me and it hurts so badly and i just want the noise to stop and